Linguistics Final Exam

Syntax

Studies how words are put together to form sentences

To a large extent, which positions a word can appear in a sentence are determined by its syntactic (category/part of speech). 

Morphosyntactic categories can either be lexical or functional….

Lexical Categories

Noun

Verb

Adjective

Adverb

Functional Categories

Preposition

Determiner

Complementizer

Coordinator

Auxiliary

Pronoun

Open Categories

 New words in those categories are easy to make up. Ex. iPod, google, defriend. These are lexical categories.

Closed Categories

Closed Categories

This means that new words in those categories are hard to make up. These are functional words where there’s super abstract meanings that cannot be paraphrased.

How is morphological structure represented

Trees!

What are the two hypothesis of Syntactic Structure

1. Sentences are structured in certain specific ways

2. Sentences are unstructured lists of words, and words are strung up in linear order one after the other

The issue of structural ambiguity

This sentence is ambiguous: The same string of words may have different structures!

The mother of the boy and the girl will arrive soon

Now, let’s look at different versions of this same sentence: 

• 1. The mother of the boy and the girl is arriving soon

• 2. The mother of the boy and the girl are arriving soon

Now, let’s group the words: 

1. [the mother of the boy and the girl] will arrive soon

2. [the mother of the boy] and the girl will arrive soon

What is the first approximation to sentence structure?

1. Linear order of words

2. Possible groupings of words

Evidence for sentence structure

John can lift 500 pounds

1       2     3    4     5 

Can John lift 500 pounds

2     1        3   4      5 

Case (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive, locative, instrumental)

A case would be like the head of a NP which would be the noun.

Nominative: pronouns used to mark subjects in languages

Accusative: used to mark direct objects of transition verbs

Dative: Marks the indirect object of a verb. For example, telling a story to her, gives her ownership of the action of telling story.

Genitive: Grammatical case used to express relationship of possession between two nouns. The “man’s foot.”

Locative: Grammatical case indicating location or position. Used to express where something is or where something is happening. “in, on, at.”

Instrumental: Signifies that the noun is the tool by which an action is carried out. For example, cutting bread with a knife would make the knife the instrumental case.

Constituency Tests (help determine if we have a noun phrase, verb phrase, or a prepositional phrase)

Replacement Test: Replacing a group of words or a phrase with one that belongs to the same category. For example when testing a noun phrase, replace the group of words with “it.”

Pronominalization/Substitution Test: if a group of words can be replaced by a pronoun, do, so, without changing meaning or grammatical structure, we have a VP.

Coordination Test: If two similar groups of words can be joined, we know that we have two separate constituents.

Anagenesis:

Evolution of one language from another in a straight, non-branching line

Cladogenesis:

the result of incomplete spread of innovations. Ancestral language splits into two (or more) daughters, at least one of which is characterized by innovations.

Proto-language:

 A language that does not have direct records of all historic language ancestors. 

Ex. proto-germanic language has three daughters, all of which are proto languages: Proto-Western Germanic, Proto-Northern Germanic, and Proto-eastern Germanic. 

To reconstruct these languages, we need to understand how language change works and that field is called historical linguistics. 

Synchronic

single “slice” in time study of language. Comparing languages all in the same time frame.

Diachronic

Comparing multiple languages across time.

The Uniformitarian Principle

 Basically states that although sound changes are small, they accumulate and cause significant changes over time. 

Northern Cities Vowel Shift

Change in vowels that hadn’t been affected by GVS.

This shift in vowel quality of several North American Vowels.  The following are some examples of the shift: This is a chain shift where one vowel change caused other vowels to change to maintain vowel continuity. 

Raising and lengthening of [ae]: Steak

Fronting of a: Stack

Lowering of alk: Stalk

Backing of A: Stuck

Cognates

Two ways of saying the same word between two languages that sounds the same and looks the same.

Grimm’s Law

Set of sound laws describing the proto-indo-european (PIE) stop consonants. 

1. Pie voiceless stops became voiceless fricatives (air released but no vocal cord vibration, we see with h)

2. PIE voiced stops became voiceless stops (consonants produced with airflow blocked like p, t k, are voiceless stops and p t v where they stop vocal chords vibrate like b d g). 

3. Pie voiced aspirated stops became voiced stops or fricatives. (p^h)

The Comparative Method

Examination of corresponding forms in several descendant languages to deduce forms of ancestral languages. 

3 Ways: 

Recurrence: ensures that similarities aren’t accidents

Correspondences: Not only identities and similarities, but any kind of regular alignment

Basic Vocabulary: words that are most likely to show the highest level of lexical continuity over time. 

The Centum and Satem Branches

Centum is the word for 100 in latin while satem is the word for 100 in Avestan. English belongs to the Centum branch. Both branches, however, reduced the number of stops from PIE languages. Both did it in different ways. 

Centum and Satem Tree:

Centum: Italian, Catalan, german, Icelandic

Satem: Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Russian, Hindi

Proto Indo European as a Synthetic Language:

PIE is typically a fusional language, characterized by rich and complex morphological systems. [Root + suffix + inflectional ending]

Theme Vowel:

Nouns can be grouped together according to come parameter. We call these groupings declension classes. Members of the same declensions have the same case-number endings. 

What is the basic word order of IE languages?

SOV

Basque as Language Isolate

Basque is a language isolate with no relatives. It has ZERO cognates with IE languages. 

Ergative Language

Basque is also an ergative language as subjects of transitive verbs have a special case, an ergative case different from the subjects of intransitive cases that have the same cases as objects. 

Grammatical Properties of Uralic

Morphology: 

• Agglutinating

• Fusional

Word Order: 

• SVO

• SOV

AND exhibits Vowel Harmony*

Complex Finnish Case System

Vowel harmony, agglutination, rich morphology, Indo-European borrowings. 15 cases.

Caucasian Languages

3 families: Kartvelian, Northwest, Northeast Caucasian

Extremely complicated with 80 consonants. Typically, we see ergative alignment. 

Altaic Languages Grammar

Shared Features: 

• SOV Order, Vowel Harmony, Agglutinative morphology, postpositions

• Not all linguists agree that Altaic Languages form a family. 

Turkic
Mongolic
Tungusic
Korean
Japonic
Ainu

Afro-Aciatic Languages

Semitic languages follow non-concatenative morphology. The basic meaning of a root is expressed with these three consonants: KTB.

Languages: Semitic, Berber, Chadic, Omotic, Egyptian

Ex. Katab, kitab, etc. for book

Sino-Tibetan Languages

Languages: Sinetic, Tibeto Burman

Basic word order of SOV, often tonal, sometimes ergative. 

Dravidian Languages

Spoken in South India and Sri Lanka

Basic Grammatical: SOV and Agglutinative

language families in africa

Nilo-Saharan languages

Niger-Congo languages
The Mande subfamily
The Atlantic subfamily
The Kwa subfamily
The Bantu subfamily

The Khoisan group (not family)

What are words with a common etymological origin called?